Anyone visiting the Finch site of Humber River Regional Hospital will notice a bizarre quirk: the elevator serves 10 floors, yet there are only seven.

Apparently, when the hospital was first built in 1967 the plan was to add more storeys when an expansion was needed. But more than four decades later, the hospital west of Jane and Finch still stands at its original height — although an expansion is long overdue.

With an annual 50,000 patients using an emergency department built for 15,000, the hospital has become seriously outdated and overcrowded, officials say.

“These are rooms that were built for the intensive-care patient of the 1950s,” says chief operating officer Barb Collins. “That’s not the intensive-care patient of today.”

Thankfully, a major upgrade is now underway with plans for a new hospital, slated to fling open its doors in late 2014 or early 2015. It will be the largest acute-care hospital in the GTA and bed capacity will increase from 549 to 656 beds, 48 for critical care.

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But the revitalization won’t be happening at the Jane and Finch location — that hospital is converting to an urgent care centre.

Nor will it be at Humber River’s other two hospitals (the three locations merged in 1997): the Church St. site, near Jane St. and Hwy. 400, and Keele St. location, just north of Eglinton Ave. Those two hospitals will eventually close, officials say.

Instead, the rebirth is occurring on approximately 12 hectares of land near Keele St. and Wilson Ave., on the Ministry of Transportation’s Downsview lands. Construction is expected to begin late this year.

Hospital officials say the new building will remedy many performance issues that plagued Humber River in the past — in 2009, provincial data showed it had some of the worst wait times in the GTA and in 2006-2007, the hospital recorded the second-worst patient death rates in Canada.

“I think the new facility will allow us to finally provide to the citizens of the area a modern standard of health care that we’ve been unable to do in our current building(s),” Collins says.

According to Collins, the new hospital will boast a “model of family-centred care” — 80 per cent of rooms will be private and have extra space for accommodating relatives staying overnight. Hospital processes will also be streamlined, with cutting-edge medical technology that includes self-charging robots for delivering supplies and “smart” beds that can monitor and record patients’ vital signs.

But while many in the community agree Humber River is in dire need of an upgrade, not everyone is ecstatic about the chosen location. At Jane and Finch, some residents wish Humber River’s glittering new facility was being built in their community.

With a high population of immigrants living in the low-income area, many can’t afford a cab ride to the new location, says Wanda MacNevin, a longtime Jane and Finch resident and director with the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre. MacNevin also belongs to the Humber River Health Coalition, a group that opposes moving or downsizing the hospital at Jane and Finch.

“What are they saying about our community (by not building it here)?” MacNevin asks. “Having a fancy new modern high-tech hospital is a wonderful thing, but you can do that on the current site.”

Fears also linger that the Jane and Finch hospital will eventually close once the new facility opens eight kilometres away. One only need look at Brampton to see what can happen to old hospitals when new ones open, says Natalie Mehra, director of the Ontario Health Coalition.

Peel Memorial Hospital was shuttered in 2007 with the opening of Brampton Civic Hospital and at the time the province pledged to eventually renovate and reopen it as an ambulatory care centre — promises currently being echoed at Humber River Regional.

Today, Peel Memorial still stands vacant.

“We fear the same thing will happen (at Jane and Finch),” Mehra says.

Ralph Masi, a family doctor who works at Humber River’s Church St. location, welcomes the new facility but is concerned about what will happen to primary care in the Jane and Finch community.

“Let’s be realistic. Most (family) doctors will move adjacent to the hospital, it just makes a lot more sense from a physician’s point of view,” he said.

Humber River CEO Rueben Devlin says such fears are unfounded. Building the new hospital at one of the existing sites also isn’t possible, he argues — none of the current locations can support the expansiveness of the new facility.

Devlin vows the Finch hospital will stay open — in fact, he says, the new facility was approved on the basis that the Finch hospital continue operating.

“We need it to have this model work,” Devlin says. “The acute care facility is just one component; without the urgent care centre, we’re missing a component.”

Health-care needs are continuing to grow, Collins says. It’s time for Humber River to keep pace.

“Nostalgia is one thing,” she says. “But let’s not stand in the way of healthy modern health care.”